My eyes burn with the glare
Of too many long nights’ vigils
Watching the winged insomnia fluttering about
From one thought
To the other
Every stream of consciousness
Every chain of thought
Loosened and undone
By Night’s hungry hands

Now
I have had enough
Of living beneath the debris
In the low shadows
I am sick
Of living small and hidden
In the cupboards of life
Sick of going through the hallways
Unseen, unoticed
I no longer want to be invisible
I want to emerge
From behind the veil,
Push the curtains aside
I am claiming the crown
I want sunlight and nightfall
To belong to me
I want the beams to bend at my fingertips
I want the wind to submit to me
I want to be immortal
I want to be the captain
But the problem is,
I am less and less
And nothing
Yet still aching for something
Still reaching for what I can't obtain

Blanche
Perched high upon a gaudy throne
In her faded dream kingdom
Where everything is soft
And glimmers and glows
Where brutal reality is hidden
By soft colors, the colors of jasmine
And butterfly wings
Her singing
Weary and strained
Like a dying star
Turning the trick
She dons such deliberate disguises
White satin, a paper lantern
Oh Blanche
Purely corrupted
Lighting ****** candles
To hide the stains
And with wide-eyed laughter,
Uttering naivetés
Dropping virginal lies like pearls from a necklace
Clinging to hope
To unheard prayers, unseen supplications
Her restless eyes
Begging for mercy
And wandering aimlessly
Through rainy afternoons in New Orleans
Her lips whisper a battle cry
I don't want realism. I want magic
I tell what ought to be the truth
Truth is sin
Verity and naked bulbs be ******

So many nights I stayed up late with him
smothered by smoke and darkness,
talking about freedom, listing all the reasons
I couldn't wait to leave this place
but it was never the small town I minded so much
as the ever present loneliness.

I remember my art teacher
pointing out that all my ****** artwork
held symbols of evasion
-an open window with views of mountains
shadows fleeing from a slit photograph
an elevator open to reveal an aquarium
Always things opening
to reveal something better

My thoughts are not chiseled in stone
my eyes are not cold marble,
they do not remain still enough
to know permanence—
They only speak escapism

My dreams and fears
are not geometric and carefully calculated.
They are horribly bohemian, fluttering and
echoing the uncertainty
of a bird's   f l  i  g
                                   h    
                                         t

I am always planning evacuation routes,
building gypsy caravans in the basements of my mind
I will always be hightailing
through the hedges and fences
put up by friends and family
I have been working on my vanishing act
for the past 16 years and
none of you will see it coming.

And I do not like to show people
the ways I have been broken, so I hide the evidence
In that sense I am a perfect houdini
-a successful illusionist, a stunt performer
I've learned that many questions like handcuffs can be avoided and evaded
as I have become able to regurgitate small white lies like keys at will

There is one escape
that I have never granted myself
the release of a blade
the empty prevarication of pain
I never cut, never slit, never shed my blood
I guess I've always been smart enough to know
that a razor doesn't have the power
to stop the tempest in my head

I will forever remain a fugitive
and when you look at me and my eyes are glazed
it means I had snuck away to my world
I've packed up and run off
and you cannot follow me
nor bring me back
no matter how hard you try